Confronting and Surviving Loss

In the United States, death is often treated with a stoic although sad attitude.  We’re conditioned to withhold external displays of emotions, and in particular men are chastised for visible displays of emotion which society deems a “weakness.”  For parents, we’re trained to tell a child that a loved one has gone to “a better place” or heaven or has “passed on”.  In some situations such as cremation, there is little ceremony or prolonged period of mourning.  The focus of this month’s theme is centered around the experience a child goes through of confronting and coping with a death in the family.

Initially, the child experiences a void, an empty feeling that is often filled with fear which can manifest itself later with substance abuse if not properly addressed at this early stage.

As a society, we are conditioned and taught not tell stories about the dead.  In other cultures however, such as in the Mexican culture during the Day of the Dead holiday, stories about the dearly departed are seen more positively as bringing back memories, experiences and related truths.  These stories also help the living and survivors keep the dead “alive” through remembered moments. 

When a family member dies and then “floats” away, or disappears, it leaves behind an empty space such that the child begins to fill in a story that is often fear-based.  Children often speak of ghosts in the closet, monsters under the bed and shadows behind the door because they are in fear. In these instances, children want to fill in the emptiness with something and cannot imagine or visualize the actual dead person because that person has “disappeared”.  Instead, children invent the personage in the form of a being between worlds - hence the ghost stories and the vague sorrow.

As an alternative, when loss or death of a family member is confronted and experienced as immediate and real and when it is characterized as something we can all face with our loved ones beside us, then the fear and the shadows are gone.

In some cultures, there is an entire ritual surrounding the loss of a family member. The family washes the body, lays out the body in the living room for all to visit and say goodbye to and grieves openly with lavish amounts of tears and many stories. While this ceremonial rite may seem foreign to us in the United States, it is a practice commonly accepted in some cultures as a positive way of coping with the loss in ordinary reality. While we may see some of this practice in the United States, the mourning period is cut short and “life goes on”.  We’re told to “toughen up” and go on with our lives.

When death is treated as a topic we should not discuss and spend too much time over, there is a distinct and real correlation between the denial and a certain inability to engage with others and ultimately has a negative impact on intimacy and ability to surrender to love and happiness.

In the end, when it seems an open, full fledged grief over a dead and departed relative would open the flood gates, it actually will relieve fear and give everyone a chance to experience the truth.  It is imperative to take a different perspective to treat it as an opportunity to survive so that we, ourselves, in the natural course of things, will continue to thrive.

Recognizing destructive effects of bullying

In October 2010, President Obama released an anti-bullying message through a video on YouTube in the wake of recent highly publicized suicides by teenagers and young adults who were bullied for their choices in life. Did you know that 13 million children are victims of bullying each year? But the message is more broadly applicable to anyone, adult, teenager or child, who has ever been ridiculed, taunted or “bullied” for looking or being “different”. And just like any other learned bias or prejudice, it begins in the home and takes shape as children and young adults emerge into the world. Bullying has certainly taken its toll on us all as a society…as a culture.

Were you a bully or were you bullied as a child? A bully is a fear-filled person. It is someone who is unable to contain or transform deep within the soul, and sometimes it results in long term fear or grief. A bully acts out because he or she has a need to release the tension that the fear or pain creates. In order to release that inner tension, a bully needs to find someone - a target or a victim who is usually perceived as a weaker person.

The release of tension by the bully is swift if the target of bullying is quickly subjected to ridicule or even physical harm. That is, if the bully perceives that the target succumbs or if the target is broken in spirit or hurt enough for the fear and pain in the bully to subside, then the bully feels that he or she has achieved the goal, albeit an ill-conceived goal.

When the target fights back and tries to prevent the harm or destruction, the bully may become violent. The bully may beat or even go so far as to cause fatal destruction to the target.

In our culture today, a bully sees “obvious” targets. Remember that a bully is born of fear and grief. Ethnic discrimination, sexual preference discrimination, poverty, appearance, weight, size and even poor grades or poor performance can be a reason for bullying. But this doesn’t mean that we don’t go out into the world confident of whomever we are or should be scared of our preferences and choices in life or what physical qualities we were born with.

To survive, a bully only needs someone to stand and take the abuse. The moment that happens, the tension-based fear is released and the bully moves on - until a new inner fear or grief mounts. The bully’s satisfaction of the release of that tension-based fear doesn’t make the act right. Without therapy or counseling, the bully does not know that treatment can show him or her a less destructive path.

Unfortunately, a bully, in some parts of our culture, can be viewed as a hero. If the culture based beliefs condone the bullying of an ethnic group or sexual group or any other easily targeted group, then that culture will rally around the bully. When this happens at a political/social level and especially at a governmental level, a dictatorship can result. A dictator is a natural bully.

Bullies are sometimes, in the moment at least, unhinged. Their fear may rise and push against any compassion so that the bully cannot stop himself or herself. The high emotion can then carry over into physical abuse and even death.

How do small acts help prevent bullying? A compassionate person will not aid or support or passively condone a bully. The problem is that even compassionate people can become dominated by a bully. It can happen in a crowd. It can happen in a family. It can happen in an office. In a school. Or even on the street. It can happen if we continue to let it happen.

Next time you see a homeless person, a poor person, someone of color, physically handicapped person, an older person, or you meet someone who has opted for choices in life different from yours, remember that a fear turned into abuse can harm with ripple effects in our society. Instead, let your fear or doubt be conscious. Do not act on that fear. Do not let it overwhelm you. Instead, embrace the differences as a positive aspect of creating a diverse culture and society. Consider looking at that other person as an aspect of yourself. In the end, we are all human.

The Three Points of the Circle of Life

This past month I had the pleasure of working with several individuals in my private practice who have permitted me to share some of their stories with you. I have taken those and expanded upon them to develop  a useful tool for readers. I call these the “Three Points of the Circle.” The first thing you may wonder is…”but three points makes a triangle, not a circle!” Indeed if you connect these points with straight lines, but if instead, you connect these points with curved or arced lines, you get a circle. So, when we see beyond the immediate logical answer, we actually get something wonderfully different. Read on if you’re curious for more….

The first point is to follow your heart. Within your heart is what you hear more commonly referred to as your “intuition.” Your intuition does not live inside your logical brain or your head. It lives within your heart. So no matter how analytical and intellectual you believe yourself to be, when you follow your “intuition”, it comes from within your heart. Your heart is the center of who you are.

The second point is that while much of life and ordinary reality is made up of divisions of time, such as years, months and days, our true inner lives and our souls have no sense of the clock and do not abide by calendars as we know them in ordinary reality.

The third point is that life is not meant to be lived in a straight line, though in American culture today, we are taught by society that an “upwardly” straight line equals “success.” But if we meander, if we travel on and on, only then are we able to savor the moment and celebrate the unexpected - the triumphs along our way. If we think of a straight line, that very definite oneness forces us to go from “beginning” to “end.” If that were the case, we would only see the end in sight and soon enough forget the beginning and middle. We become always goal oriented and not open to the unexpected and the special.

By putting these points all together and “connecting the dots”, we get this wonderful thing called the “circle of life.” Who you truly are is your circle called life.

Life is a circle, not a straight line. Though we often think of life as a straight line, from birth to death, it is not. Life is a circle much like a wheel with a hub that is the heart and spokes that are the lines that divide different parts of our living moments into years, events and much deeper, to the unconscious aspects of our inner being, the self or soul.

An individual I work with, a 45-year old woman who had found tremendous professional and personal “success” in earlier years in that “upwardly” straight line I mentioned, recently found herself right back to the financial and personal circumstances she faced over 25 years ago in college. While she did everything “right” her whole life and achieved so much beyond an average person by her mid-30’s, at one time having a net worth of several million and being a generous philanthropist to the needy, today, she finds herself on the other side of the giving line. Today, she shops at discount stores for plastic boxes to assemble a makeshift closet for what little clothing she has left. In a span of less than 12 months, due to the economy, she lost a half million dollar home and sold all of her possessions to survive. She has nothing left but a few possessions and her beloved pets. Yet, she called me one morning and started the conversation by telling me that she was shopping for the same things that she did when she was poor in college- plastic crates and boxes for makeshift closets. We all remember our poor college days, but in those days, we didn’t know what we know today. Less than 5 years ago she was shopping at Neiman Marcus and she was on the cover of a magazine for her philanthropic and charitable work. Then she laughed and said something remarkable to me. She said “I could be really sad about this whole thing, but you know what, these plastic closet things have really come a long way! They are so well-made these days and there are so many options and styles, I’m so excited about it!”

And I reminded her that life is a circle – though we may find ourselves where we were 20 or 30 years ago with our finances or circumstances, life is not a race, it’s not a straight line we have to follow towards increasing amounts of fame or fortune. Life is a circle! Life is this wonderful continuous circle – and because of advances and innovations in our outside world, when we find ourselves traversing that circle, though we may feel that we’ve gone right back to where we started, that part of the circle is actually very different. It has shaped and changed and evolved…just like our souls and inner selves do.

As we travel this circle, we grow in wisdom and rounding any curve of it, we can sense change, from childhood to adolescence to adulthood to old age and to what we know as death.

Another client I have been working with lost her parents at a very young age and was adopted into a household where she was accepted. Though she felt loved, she did not feel right or that she was in her right life. Her life felt untrue. She began to work with her deeper self at the soul level or the hub of the circle and by going into her own deeper reality she found that her life was different than the straight line she was living. She found there were many facets and aspects she could meander through. She found that the curve of her life had valleys and peaks and that she could travel along the spokes and do inward or outward. She felt unlimited. She felt she could explore possibilities. She felt her dream life informed her waking life. She began to believe that her birth into her body was but one of many possible lifetimes. She felt there were no endings and really no beginnings.

She felt free. She began to live from her heartbeat outward into the world. She chose new and different experiences and relationships. She celebrated moments without expecting a different ego influenced outcome.

She gave to others. She fell in love. She traveled around the curve of her life and ventured back and forth to and into her hub or true self. She noted the different parts of her circle. She began to think of death as the beginning of a new life. She lost fear and anxiety. Fear became true moments. Anxiety drifted away like a cloud of disbelief.

To think of living as a continuous event gives us the courage to move forward in a more meandering fashion and not in a hurried, often harried straight line with the anxiety that a dead end can provoke.

Once you remember that the center or hub of the circle of life is our heart and within that drumbeat is the energy force we call self or soul, you’ll find the power to continue to traverse the circle in ways that feed your soul…for life.